If the French noblesse had been capable of playing cricket with their peasants, their chateaux would never have been burnt. - G M Trevelyan

Friday, May 04, 2007

Back to the Future

I'll hold my hands up now and say that when Paul Nixon was picked for the England ODI squad last winter, I was one amongst many who questioned the sense of the pick. Bearing in mind that he appeared to have been chosen on the basis that he was gobby and good at irritating people I suggested that if that was the criteria, maybe Jim Davidson, Bono, Rev Ian Paisley and Lily Allen should also be added to the squad.

Fair play to him though, he didn't take the TRSM criticism too hard and became one of the few 'successes' of the winter campaign with some timely batting and a generally tidy performance behind the stumps.

When the World Cup ended, you expected him to get a pat on the back from Peter Moores, and then return to the county circuit with a decent sun tan and some wonderful memories to bore his team mates with during the summer.

Bit of a shock, therefore, to find him in the 25 man squad for the first test.

Now, it's likely that he'll get picked. It's equally likely that he'll score some useful runs with probably a typically scrappy half century somewhere along the line, scored at the end of the innings as England declare on around 550-8 in one of the tests. It's equally likely that he'll keep wicket competently, take a few catches and make some tidy stumpings off of Monty.

In short, he'll do everything that's asked of him - in fact probably more.

But he still shouldn't be in the squad. He's not a Test match keeper, for one thing - nor is he someone who should be figuring in any of England's test plans beyond the end of this summer - and if that's the case, why pick him now?

There are at least four keepers in the County system at the moment who should have been picked ahead of him - Prior, Foster, Davies and Chris Read. Of those four, one is in the squad, but there's no word at this stage as to who is the intended number one.

The Lara-less West Indies side that's touring is going to be the weakest to visit these shores since the late sixties. England turned them over when they were last here - and they haven't got any stronger since then. It would have been an ideal time to draft in one or two of the keepers you'd suspect will be doing the job four or five years down the line - to let them get some relatively easy home tests under their belt before the ardours of a winter tour, and the visit of South Africa next summer.

Obviously our 'innovative' and 'forward thinking' new coach is not of the same mind.